Mind-to-market tales are all the rage at innovation show

When he used to pull a rickshaw in the Kauria Pul area in old Delhi in the late 1980s, Dharamvir Singh could have never imagined - even in his wildest dreams - that one day he would be face to face with the country's President.

Not only could Singh meet President Pratibha Devisingh Patil this week, but products innovated by him are creating ripples across the developing world - from Cameron to Kenya.

Singh, an innovator-turned-entrepreneur, is a perfect example of how need-based innovative ideas can be turned into marketable products profitably.

Dharamvir Singh has
developed a multi-purpose
processing unit capable of
pulverizing steaming and
extracting essence or juice
out of vegetables, fruits
and herbs on an industrial
scale. The machine can
process about 200 kgs of any
raw material in an hour

Singh has developed a multipurpose processing unit capable of pulverizing, steaming and extracting essence or juice out of fruits, vegetables and herbs on an industrial scale.

The machine, based on a specially designed pressure cooking chamber, can process about 200 kgs of any raw material ranging from amla and aloe vera to mango and tomato per hour.

'The best thing is it can be used for a variety of fruits and herbs.

Abhishek Bhagat has developed an automatic food maker ¿
an electrically operated machine in which all one has to do is load ingredients in different
containers and insert a recipe card

Farmers can process their own produce or run small-scale food processing units', Singh, a resident of Damla village in Haryana, said while speaking to Mail Today at the grassroots innovation exhibition currently on at the sports ground in the President's Estate. Singh's innovation has been received well in the market.

Over 220 units of the Rs 1.35- lakh processor have already been sold in Haryana and neighbouring states.

The Ahmedabad-based National Innovation Fund (NIF) helped Singh in taking his prototype to the production stage by providing seed money from its micro venture innovation fund.

One unit has been sent to Kenya on a pilot basis for application feasibility study there, while enquiries have been received from several other African countries.

Over the past two decades, the Honeybee Network and NIF, founded by Anil Gupta, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, has built a database of 1.6 lakh grassroots innovations from all over the country.

Harinarayan Prajapat, a car mechanic from Jaipur has developed a kit that can improve mileage of two-wheelers

The best ideas are awarded every year, interesting innovations and prototypes are improvised through professional, technical and design help and innovators are helped to take their products to market.

'It is a long and tedious process but we now have a proven model of 'bottoms-up approach'. We scout innovations in informal sector, from common people, farmers, tribals, students and so on and then take them all the way up to the market,' Gupta said.

So far, over 500 patents have been filed and about 10 per cent of them have been granted. A number of ideas have been converted into products by innovators themselves and by small and medium scale enterprises.